$29 Snow Leopard retail disc will install over Tiger

It looks like Apple has "conceded" that it's possible to install Mac OS X 10.6 …

As many have speculated, Apple has added no technical limitations to the install process to prevent the $29 standard Snow Leopard disc from installing on a Mac running Tiger. The information was confirmed in an early review of Snow Leopard by All Things Digital's Walt Mossberg published late last night. "Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140" over the Mac Box Set, Mossberg wrote.

What he didn't say, however, is that doing so would violate the end user license agreement for Snow Leopard. Essentially, Apple's reasoning is that Tiger users never paid for Leopard, and therefore shouldn't get such a killer deal on Snow Leopard. But instead of implementing some draconian method to prevent the install from working (cough—Windows Genuine Advantage—cough), Apple is instead relying on the honor system, which it has for all its system software.

We know that not every Ars reader is so enamored with the concept of EULAs to begin with, but software companies often have graduated upgrade pricing depending on the version you are upgrading from. Apple's pricing for Snow Leopard is really no different in this respect. The Mac Box Set includes Snow Leopard as well as the latest versions of iLife and iWork for $169, so it's really not a bad deal. We also know about 2 percent of you don't want to dish out the ducats for the official upgrade path from Tiger. So, the real question is, do you want to violate the EULA to save some money, and potentially ruin it for the rest of us honest folk?

Good news for someone like me. My laptop is running Leopard, but I never bothered to upgrade my Desktop from Tiger since there was no terribly compelling reason. I don't care about getting iLife/iWork 09. Installing Leopard, just to immediately overwrite it seemed like a waste of my time.

Yeah, I imagine Apple isn't too worried about this. From the numbers I've seen about 3/4 of Mac users are running Leopard. And quite a few of the folks running Tiger are probably also using PPC, considering that the Intel Macs didn't start shipping till almost a year after Tiger was released, and Leopard starting shipping just a year and a half after that. So Apple is looking at only a small percentage of it's users that could take advantage of this loophole anyway.

Originally posted by pavon:Yeah, I imagine Apple isn't too worried about this. From the numbers I've seen about 3/4 of Mac users are running Leopard. And quite a few of the folks running Tiger are probably also using PPC, considering that the Intel Macs didn't start shipping till almost a year after Tiger was released, and Leopard starting shipping just a year and a half after that. So Apple is looking at only a small percentage of it's users that could take advantage of this loophole anyway.

Makes sense, but in that case why did Apple not just make SL $29 for all users?

My up-to-date Leopard DVD still requests access to view the Tiger DVDs that were supplied with my Macbook, before it will do a clean install, although it will then do it happily without needing Tiger on the HD. I don't really understand why they haven't done something similar with SL; Got Leopard installed? No problem. Not got it installed? Show us the install DVD. Got Tiger installed? Show us a Leopard install DVD.

All said it's a good deal.Apple didn't stick it to us like MS did,.......even after the Vista debacle.It's too bad that Apple's reasonable price structure didn't shame MS into being a little more decent with their Win-7 prices. Win-7 really is a nice OS and worth some money too, but they failed to deliver with Vista. It wasn't until the service pack came out for Vista that it became viable as an OS to the masses. So MS is way ahead of the game with what they made on Vista and can afford to do what Apple just had the CLASS to do.

Well. It'd be nice to buy Snow Leopard without the boxed set. I preordered Tiger from Amazon before it came out for ~75ish. I think Leopard alone was $129 or something like that but $99-$129 might be reasonable.

Its annoying that it says only $29 when its only an upgrade path.

Then again. Many Intel Macs came with Leopard. Tiger was installed on Intel Macs for 12-16 months before Leopard came out... Something like that.

Originally posted by curih:Good news for someone like me. My laptop is running Leopard, but I never bothered to upgrade my Desktop from Tiger since there was no terribly compelling reason. I don't care about getting iLife/iWork 09. Installing Leopard, just to immediately overwrite it seemed like a waste of my time.

I'm just the opposite. My desktop (iMac) is running Leopard, but I never bothered upgrading the laptop from Tiger.

Originally posted by realneil:All said it's a good deal.Apple didn't stick it to us like MS did,.......even after the Vista debacle.It's too bad that Apple's reasonable price structure didn't shame MS into being a little more decent with their Win-7 prices. Win-7 really is a nice OS and worth some money too, but they failed to deliver with Vista. It wasn't until the service pack came out for Vista that it became viable as an OS to the masses. So MS is way ahead of the game with what they made on Vista and can afford to do what Apple just had the CLASS to do.

Agreed, Win 7 is a good OS, and it really should be less expensive. It fixes alot of Vista's flaws and every user should be able to upgrade easily.What's gonna happen? Very few people will actually buy Win 7, they'll upgrade with new machines.

On Mac, a lot of people will buy 10.6 (I already ordered my familly pack), because at this price, it's a no brainer. Given the price of Win 7, it's not a no brainer, even if it's good.

MS should have given a lower price, if only for them! Lots of people are still running XP, a 2001 OS. Who is still running a 2001 Mac OS or Linux? Nobody. If they had put a $50 tag on Win 7, a lot of people would have upgrade and they could have drop support for XP/IE6 in 2010. But now, we'll have to deal with this old stuff for another couple of years. It would have been good for MS users, developers, IT, etc... Too bad for them. I switched to Mac in 2006, and never looked back, and it seems it won't happen.

Originally posted by newwb:Makes sense, but in that case why did Apple not just make SL $29 for all users?

Psystar.

They can now try buying the more expensive $169 version and putting that on their computers, or try to save some cash and buy the $29 version. Either it's more expensive for them or they legally screw themselves.

While I don't advocate violating the EULA (I have Leopard anyway) and I'm sure Apple wouldn't mind a little extra cash, in this case I think Apple is more interested in getting people to move to Snow Leopard.

Originally posted by newwb:Makes sense, but in that case why did Apple not just make SL $29 for all users?

Because they feel they can trust their customers to do "the right thing", whatever that might be. It's the same reason they pushed to have DRM off of iTunes music. As Anita Man breaks it down, these are low cost per item and Apple largely sells to a market that has already chosen convience/quality over absolute lowest price. So in large part they will pay what is "fair".

EDIT: BTW I hacked iWork 08 to extend past the 30-day eval because I started the clock but didn't have time to eval it properly. In the end I decided to not use it. But now that my son has used Keynote a lot (by far the best "educational" software I've found for him) I'll likely purchase it. That it was relatively easy to extend past the 30 day eval eventually worked out for Apple, if it didn't have that I doubt we'd ever discover how good a fit it is for our son.

Originally posted by newwb:Makes sense, but in that case why did Apple not just make SL $29 for all users?

Because they feel they can trust their customers to do "the right thing", whatever that might be. It's the same reason they pushed to have DRM off of iTunes music. As Anita Man breaks it down, these are low cost per item and Apple largely sells to a market that has already chosen convience/quality over absolute lowest price. So in large part they will pay what is "fair".

Well they actually figure that *surprise* their customers AREN'T thieves trying to take their software for free. They're at least paying for it, so they actually treat their customers like... well, customers. And so as a result of that philosophy, they don't put DRM on it, like Microsoft does on Windows.

I agree with you Tyler and Derek, but I would like to add that its important for apple to have as large a customer base for the current version of OS X as possible, from a support standpoint as well as a development standpoint. Personally I don't know why anyone would still be on Tiger at this point. The efficiency benefits of Expose and spaces (for me) more than pay for themselves. I could understand the argument that Leopard felt slower than Tiger at first, because it did, but Leopard is now mature and is only going to get faster and less bloated with Snow Lepard.

As an aside, I love how Apple is always looking forward with their OS design. Though its partially because of their small (compared to Windows) install base. Even when Microsoft makes a concerted and well publicised effort to slim down their operating system and remove some of the legacy cruft as they did with Win 7, they fail. They are still largely tied down to their legacy codebase, which people cling to through either unwillingness to recode their application or through stupidity.. Sucks to be Microsoft.

(Having said that I use Vista regularly on my MacPro for games and a few other things, and never found Vista to be THAT slow. It does make my 4 core MacPro feel like a Athlon 64 with XP though, which sucks.)

The number of people who could want an upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard is limited. Anyone with a PowerPC Mac is already out. Apple started shipping Intel models in early 2006 and then Leopard toward the end of 2007. So, for about 18 months machines shipped with Tiger, and of course a fair percentage of those have already upgraded to Leopard. All the machines since, nearly two years worth, came with Leopard to start with.

The pricing of Snow Leopard does serve to emphasize the upgrade nature of all Mac sales though. The family pack I'm getting costs only $10/machine. I don't see how anybody could argue with a straight face that that should be the price for a full operating system install.

Originally posted by chuckyp83:[...]I could understand the argument that Leopard felt slower than Tiger at first, because it did, but Leopard is now mature and is only going to get faster and less bloated with Snow Lepard.[...]

That's why.I'm on Tiger and I felt that I didn't need Leopard features, especially since it seems to be slower.

When I finally decide to buy Leopard, Snow Leopard was announced and described as faster. So I sticked with Tiger waiting for SL.

Now, what disappoints me is the lack of standalone Snow Leopard version...I'd happily pay 129€ for Tiger to SL direct update but not 169€ for the bundle (I definitely don't care about iWork/iLife)...

So maybe I'll stick with the 29€ update... and maybe I'll buy a useless version of Leopard by honesty.

So what I'd like explained is why so many users are on Leopard? (or why it is assumed everyone is on Leopard)

My reasoning against that is basically I'm on Tiger and didn't see a compelling reason to upgrade. Tiger was, and still is, awesome. So yeah, I'm planning up upgrading to Snow Leopard, but I just don't understand how there isn't more people in my situation! (Or maybe they aren't nerds and don't hang out on Ars?)

Originally posted by HorusUltd:So maybe I'll stick with the 29€ update... and maybe I'll buy a useless version of Leopard by honesty.

Sealed-in-box Leopard discs seem to be going for just under $100 shipped on eBay. That gets you under your desired "Tiger to SL direct update" price without violating the license, and the fact that they were decent enough not to include a check for Leopard saves you installing the useless version of Leopard, at least

Originally posted by kaydot:So what I'd like explained is why so many users are on Leopard? (or why it is assumed everyone is on Leopard)

My reasoning against that is basically I'm on Tiger and didn't see a compelling reason to upgrade. Tiger was, and still is, awesome. So yeah, I'm planning up upgrading to Snow Leopard, but I just don't understand how there isn't more people in my situation! (Or maybe they aren't nerds and don't hang out on Ars?)

I'm on Tiger, too, for the reasons you stated. But I'm one of those PPC people who will only be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard by getting a new Mac which I plan to do soon. I won't have to worry about how to extricate myself from the horns of the ethical dilemma of whether to pay for the upgrade or the Mac boxed set. I'll just fork over the full retail price for a new iMac!

Originally posted by HorusUltd:So maybe I'll stick with the 29€ update... and maybe I'll buy a useless version of Leopard by honesty.

Sealed-in-box Leopard discs seem to be going for just under $100 shipped on eBay. That gets you under your desired "Tiger to SL direct update" price without violating the license, and the fact that they were decent enough not to include a check for Leopard saves you installing the useless version of Leopard, at least

We're a three Mac home so I got a SL family pack. A couple of my friends recently lost their jobs so I'll give them the other two installs. Even then, at US$16.33 per install at home you really can't complain about the price.

Also, as mentioned by others I really appreciate Apple treating their customers like human beings instead of thieves.

Intel machines that shipped with Tiger included iLife '06 - maybe there are bugs/issues with it on Snow Leopard, and that's why the "official" upgrade path from Tiger to Snow Leopard is the Box Set?

Even if not, they probably didn't bother with an activation key just because the number of people jumping from Tiger straight to Snow Leopard is very small, since probably half the people running Tiger are on PowerPC and can't upgrade.

Apple knows they got you eventually which why I hope they will stick with the no serial #s on OS discs. True, you buy a Mac Mini the disc is tied to a Mac Mini, but the retail version is unrestricted. Not to start yet another pointless apples to oranges price comparison thread but Apple computers have never been a better value for money for most people. I looked at a tower but decided on a Mac Mini because it can handle Lightroom/Photoshop/Illustrator just fine and at $800 does everything I want it to do. Therefore more frequent hardware replacements are no big deal.

"But instead of implementing some draconian method to prevent the install from working (cough—Windows Genuine Advantage—cough), Apple is instead relying on the honor system, which it has for all its system software."

Pathetic... YOu know damn well MS cant... whtaever, its like talking to people who DO know better but choose not in order to thump chest with the other alpha's on their team.

Originally posted by JamesHulsmann:"But instead of implementing some draconian method to prevent the install from working (cough—Windows Genuine Advantage—cough), Apple is instead relying on the honor system, which it has for all its system software."

Pathetic... YOu know damn well MS cant... whtaever, its like talking to people who DO know better but choose not in order to thump chest with the other alpha's on their team.